1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording medium used in an ink-jet recording system to conduct recording by ejecting ink droplets. More specifically, the present invention relates to a heat-bondable ink-jet recording medium which can be heat-bonded onto an adherend article, after a recorded image is formed thereon by ink-jet recording.
2. Related Background Art
Ink-jet recording conducts recording of images and characters by ejecting ink droplets by a variety of methods onto a recording medium like a paper sheet. Ink-jet recording has many advantages of high-speed printing with less noise generation, ease of multi-color printing, adaptability to variation of recording patterns, and needlessness of operation of latent image development and image fixation. Therefore, ink-jet recording is rapidly becoming popular in various application fields such as recording of patterns including characters, and color images. With the diversification of needs, ink-jet-printed paper sheets or films are coming increasingly to be used for labels and emblems. Labels, which can be bonded onto various adherend articles in simple operation, are used generally in many application fields.
New applications are being developed in which the features of the labels and the features of the ink-jet recording medium for simple image-formation are combined. For example, cloths readily dyeable by ink-jet printing have been developed as the ink-jet recording medium. Such cloths are required increasingly to be made suitable for use for emblems, and to be workable readily domestically for displaying numbers such as players"" numbers, and uniform numbers, displaying names, and displaying characters and images for advertisement. Such cloths may contain a cationic substance or a nonionic surfactant to prevent discoloration in washing or other treatment after the printing, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. 7-292581 and 8-218279.
In order to make emblems, however, by bonding a recording medium for an ink-jet system on a cloth or the like, after characters or images are formed on the recording medium, it is necessary to sew it to the cloth, or to bond it thereto by an adhesive. This requires much labor. Otherwise, a hot-melt adhesive layer is formed preliminarily on the cloth. Although the hot-melt adhesive layer can be also provided on the cloth mentioned above in advance, a relation between thermal characteristics and a thickness of the hot-melt adhesive layer has not been considered at such a conventional cloth as heat-bondable recording materials. Consequently, there has been brought such disadvantages, that the cloth cannot be conveyed when printing is conducted using an ink-jet printer and that high quality images cannot be obtained due to lowering of an ink-absorbency of an ink-receiving layer and flowing or running of the ink on the recording medium, and also that sufficient adhesion between the cloth and the hot-melt adhesive layer cannot be obtained, and the emblem cloth may be frayed from its end or may be peeled when washing.
The object of the invention is to provide a highly durable heat-bondable ink-jet recording medium which enables formation of a high-quality image by ink-jet printing without flowing or running of ink, capable of forming strong heat-bonding onto an adherend article domestically, and causing no fray of the cloth end or peeling of the label or emblem from the cloth after bonding during use.
The above object can be achieved by the present invention described below.
According to the present invention there is provided a heat-bondable ink-jet recording medium comprising a base sheet having an ink-receiving layer and, on one face thereof, an adhesive layer having a melting point of not higher than 110xc2x0 C. as measured by DSC, and a melt viscosity of not lower than 10,000 cP within a temperature range of from 120 to 170xc2x0 C.